


Punchline comes before the joke

by BakedAppleSauce



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: (I just wanted to write some action I guess), (the rating is for violence), (there's no porn for now!), Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Season/Series 05, some people try to kill Alfie and he's not amused
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 10:15:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20758715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BakedAppleSauce/pseuds/BakedAppleSauce
Summary: The good thing, Alfie thinks afterwards, as he’s sitting in his armchair – the same one he’s been sat in on a regular basis for more than a year – as he tries to ignore the spreading puddle of blood on the floor that’s soaking into his carpet, the silver lining about this whole thing, really, is the fact that they picked a day where there haven’t been any seagulls around.In which some people take less issue with the prospect of dying than others.





	Punchline comes before the joke

The good thing, Alfie thinks afterwards, as he’s sitting in his armchair – the same one he’s been sat in on a regular basis for more than a year – as he tries to ignore the spreading puddle of blood on the floor that’s soaking into his carpet, the silver lining about this whole thing, really, is the fact that they picked a day where there haven’t been any seagulls around. 

That, and the fact that apparently nobody bothered to check on his habits. (Might have discovered any of the numerous neighbourly complaints this way, for example, about him shooting at things from his balcony, which is one of those non-existent problems, really, the ones you just have to throw money at to make them go away.) Probably means that this has been a spontaneous kind of undertaking, which… he doesn’t know how to feel about that just yet.

In any case, today being a rather seagull-less day, he hasn’t fired a single shot, which means his gun is still fully loaded on the little side table right next to his tea, by the time he can hear his nurse tell whoever is at the door right now that “There’s nobody with the name of Solomons living here. Sorry, sir, must have the wrong address.”

(Never been too keen on him leaving the gun lying around the living area, that one. She’s only been here for two weeks, but she saw through his tendency to heartily agree with everything she said and then immediately forget about it two minutes later, to keep doing whatever the fuck he wanted, almost immediately and hadn't been thrilled about it.) 

Then there’s a gunshot.

Alfie's first, completely irrational thought turns out to be that _ bloody hell _ – that’s a bit of an overreaction on her part, innit, just firing at the bloke for asking a simple question. 

His second, more rational thought is to go for the gun. Six shots, he thinks, that’ll have to do, won’t it. It’s either going to be enough or it isn’t.

There are heavy footsteps now, audibly moving through the hallway in his direction. Only one male voice at the door, he thinks, but there’s definitely more than one person coming. He’s gotten up, he realizes, which… it’s not going to be the smartest move, right, just standing there, so he cycles through his options. Curtains, armchairs, shelves, all of them useless or obvious fucking hiding spots. 

Could just jump off the balcony, he thinks, almost amused by that thought for some reason. Make everybody’s evening a lot easier, including his own – but of course, he tried that already, didn’t he. Tried to make it easier on himself and the only thing that happened was the realization that apparently, he’s just not the type of person suited to _ easy. _

(Well, that and the eye. That happened too, didn't it, nothing for it now.)

He staggers across the room, towards the door. It’s going to open inwards, door handle on the left side, which is a good thing, probably, since his right eye is the one that isn’t useless yet. 

Plasters himself next to the right side of the door, back against the wall, so the opening door is going to hide him from immediate discovery. Whoever's coming might think Alfie barricaded the door or something, because that first gunshot was nothing if not obvious, except he’s pretty sure they’re operating under the impression that he’s some kind of invalid, which… he’ll take that advantage and run with it, won’t he, cheers and fuck you very much.

(Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s been actual years since he’s managed to run anywhere at all.) 

He racks the gun, first bullet sliding into the chamber, clicks the safety down and gets the weapon up just in time before the door bursts open like somebody tried to kick it in. So they _ did _expect some kind of resistance there, maybe a barricade, or maybe they're just trying to be as unsubtle as possible, he thinks, in the split second it takes from the door swinging wildly on its hinges to the first guy to come into view. 

He storms into the room, back turned, so Alfie puts a bullet into the back of his head with an ease that surprises even himself. All that seagull practice, thinks some secluded part of his mind that seems to be analyzing every single detail right now, from the way the balcony curtains sway in the breeze to the way the guy’s legs seem to go almost immediately. Must have done wonders for his aim. 

There is a furious shout – can’t have been the first guy, clearly, because he’s crumpling to the ground like a discarded coat already. Second guy, then. Another shot is fired, very close proximity, as deafening as the first one Alfie took. Maybe something shatters, Alfie thinks, can’t be sure of that, and then he’s running on pure instinct, reacting to some movement right next to him, because the second guy is on the other side of the wooden barrier that is his living room door. 

He throws himself to the side, leading with his shoulder, and connects with the door, knocking it sideways. Something’s in the way almost immediately – the body of another person, hopefully – making a muffled noise and then there's a pained sound.

Alfie’s already busy grabbing the door again with his left hand, because the other one is holding the gun, forgoes the door handle to grip it by its side, pulls it back open (using it for balance at the same time, because he’s not the most steady person on his feet even on his best of days) and smashes it forward again with as much force as he can muster.

This time, the impact is hard enough to reverberate up to his shoulder, leaving his arm feeling numb. There’s another noise, sounding almost shocked this time, and then _ another _ shot ringing out, bloody _ fucking hell, _ and then a sharp pain at his right temple. 

Something fills his field of vision, suddenly, lightning quick, flitting everywhere, and it takes him a second to realizes that it’s literally wood – splinters going in every direction, because that cunt has just shot through the door. Got the height perfect as well, because the hole is level with Alfie’s head, just a bit too far to the left.

Missed, probably, because even though Alfie knows for a fact he wouldn’t feel anything right now, even if he _ was _shot, adrenaline and all that, his body still seems to be responding fine, which is all that really matters right now, anyway. He tries to pull the door back again, to hit him with it some more, except this time there’s resistance, because the bastard is holding on to it from the other side. 

And then Alfie is moving almost _ before _the initial moment of realization is over, body responding to what it suddenly knows is going to happen next all by itself – his leg buckles and he drops down to the floor with what is probably the grace and elegance of a wounded hippo, awkwardly catching himself on his good knee, shoulder pressed against the door for balance.

Then there’s a hail of splinters raining down on him, strange crackling sounds of the wood in between the actual gun shots, and he’s trying to shield his face with his arm, counting automatically in his head, _ three, four, five, _ bastard might run out at six, depending on what he's using, except then he stops. 

He’s going to come around the door now, Alfie knows that immediately, knows it in his bones, because the impulse to check whether he’s hit something or not is going to be overriding common sense; which is stupid as fuck if you ask him, because the smart thing would be to retreat a bit, wouldn’t it, wait him out, since it’s not like Alfie has any options to leave. 

Second guy comes into view with one long, decisive step. Alfie ignores his face completely, focused on his arms instead – the man is actually aiming down, some brains to him after all, it would be almost impressive – except he’s not on guard, not _ as _ready to fire, which turns out to be the crucial difference, since Alfie’s already put his wrist on his good knee to steady the gun, barrel pointed upwards. He fires twice, aiming for center mass, and is instantly aware he hasn’t hit anything that is going to kill him right this very second.

Still, it seems to be enough, because the guy blinks at him, with that surprised look on his face people always get – they can feel something’s wrong, but there’s no pain yet, so their brain hasn’t got the message and can’t help them understand. He sways on his feet and then seems to go limp, grip on his gun loosening; it drops to the floor and fucking _ goes off. _

The shot makes Alfie flinch and curl in on himself automatically, one arm over his head like that is going to do anything. Missed, he thinks, missed, missed, fucking _ missed. _

There is a dull crash, which is the guy dropping down to his knees in front of him, still alive, still blinking at Alfie like he’s never seen another human being before in his life. Alfie stares back at him. There’s something on his neck, feeling wet. Might be blood, he thinks. Judging by the way his temple seems to be pulsing in time with his heartbeat, maybe he hit his head or something.

The guy in front of him starts falling over backwards, almost comically slow, arms twitching uselessly, blood already seeping through his clothes. Alfie reaches for the gun he dropped with a grunt, picks it up. Realizes that now he’s just kneeling there with a gun in each hand, like a moron, with no way to get up. Puts the safety on his own gun back on, since it’s the one that’s bound to be less hot, and awkwardly shoves it into the back of his trousers. One shot left in the other gun.

He reaches for the door handle with his free hand, drags himself into an upright position. The door makes a protesting noise but holds steady, hinges probably damaged. 

Now Alfie’s looking down at the guy, sprawled out at his feet, still alive, lips moving wordlessly. Gut shot, he thinks, with blood that dark, it has to be. He tries to listen through the ringing in his ears, forces himself to pay attention to his surroundings. 

Instinct tells him that he’s done, there’s nobody else here… but instinct can be fucking wrong, right, so he limps through every room of his entire apartment, confirming that yes, he is indeed the only person still moving around in here.

His nurse, sadly, is indeed deceased. One shot to the head, very clean, which… that does sting a bit, he’s not going to lie. (Probably more than she felt when she was dying, Alfie thinks, which might be some consolation. Not to anybody who might have really cared about her, mind you, but for him, in the right here and now, yeah… he'll find some peace in the fact she didn't suffer.) 

When he gets back into the living area, it turns out the man with the gut shot is still alive and from the looks of it, probably will be for a while longer. But that might not be a bad thing, Alfie thinks. Would be nice to know who just tried to murder him on this fine evening, after all. 

He searches around for his cane and only manages to spot his second favorite one, in the corner he put it in three days ago. Fine then, he thinks, beggars and choosers and all that. 

He ambles over, cane clutched in one hand, gun in the other. The guy on the ground is tracking every single one of his movements with his eyes as best he can, without moving his head too much. There's blood seeping out of the corner of his mouth as well, now. Hasn't said anything yet; might very well be that he actually can't, Alfie’s not too sure about it. 

"Hello," he says amicably, once he’s standing right next to the man. 

The man is just staring up at him with wide eyes. There's awareness there, Alfie thinks, he's not just staring off into space, too preoccupied with the pain. He puts the tip of his cane right next to the bullet hole in his abdomen carefully, no pressure yet. Plants his feet and distributes his weight as evenly as he can, so he won't be caught off guard in the unlikely case the guy decides to make a move. 

"You think you're gonna be able to participate in this conversation, mate? Hm?" 

The guy keeps staring up at him defiantly. He definitely knows what's going on. 

"You can just nod, yeah," Alfie tells him. "If that’s more convenient for you."

"Fuck you," the man says, garbled. "Dirty fuckin’…_ Jew." _

"Hmmmm," Alfie says. That certainly shortens the list. Not because of the insult, naturally, but because of the accent – in his mind, he was half-convinced the guy was going to turn out Italian, but no… Scottish it is, apparently. Which makes one particular name rise to the very top, doesn't it. 

"You see," he says conversationally, and starts leaning forward, pressing the tip of his cane down a bit. There is a frantic sound from below, the man's breathing speeding up. "The thing is, mate. The thing is, yeah, that I've actually been where you are now, hm? Haven't I. Right fucking there. Wouldn't worry too much about it, actually, right, 'cause as it turns out? Yeah? You could… just... walk it all... _ off." _

Weirdly, his brain supplies the image of Tommy Shelby looming over him on the beach all of a sudden, in a role reversal to the current situation; with Alfie staring up at him and telling _ him _ to fuck off, which is probably something that never happened. 

He's pretty sure the guy on his floor would be screaming by now, if he had enough air to spare, but he doesn't, so he's just making some continuous, high-pitched noise that Alfie pays it no mind. 

"Being shot, though," he continues. "S'annoying fuckin' business, innit. Very grating, that, yeah. Don't worry 'bout saving face or anything mate, right, and don't worry 'bout coming up with some story either, because you see… I already _ know." _

He takes the weight off his cane and the guy gasps for air like a fish on dry land, like he has been holding his breath for the last minute or two, which he definitely hasn't. 

"Because you see I, right, _ I _ am in the business of knowing things. I’ve been there and I’ve risen above, haven't I, and now I know everything there is to know." 

He does a dramatic flourish with the gun in his hand that his audience definitely doesn't seem to appreciate.

"Mad… fuckin'… bastard," the guy pants, right on cue. "You're fuck-" 

_ "Right," _ Alfie says, because honestly, he’s not in the mood to listen to this, putting weight on his cane again and the man stops talking immediately. "All right, then. Listen up, mate, ‘cause what’s gonna happen now, right, is that I'm gonna tell you a name, and you're gonna fuckin' nod when I'm inevitably gonna be right about it. Yeah? Agreed? Here we go, then." 

"Fuck yo-" the guy tries to say, except it immediately turns into a breathless, high-strung sort of howl. Alfie carefully checks his cane placement – doesn’t want to slip and end up with his cane actually _ in _the bullet hole, does he, because that might make the guy die a lot quicker than he already is and then where would he be? Standing around with no information and another dead body on his hands, that’s where.

“Oswald Mosley,” he says.

The guy’s eyes snap open, staring up at him as if surprised. Probably would’ve been able to keep his reaction in check under more normal circumstances, Alfie thinks; at least hide it a bit better, but he can’t now. Pain’ll do that to people. He tries to remember the name of the other cunt, the Scottish one that works for that fascist fuck, and is no doubt in charge of the two people bleeding all over Alfie’s living room, but he comes up empty. 

Isn’t quite sure whether he never knew it or just forgot about it. Maybe this is what old age feels like, he thinks, a constant struggle of trying to recall all of the people who want to assassinate you.

“Right,” he says again and pulls his cane away. “Thank you, thank you.” 

The guy heaves a breath of relief that sounds like a sob. Alfie ignores him and shuffles out into the hallway, to find the telephone. 

“Shelby,” says an absent-sounding voice, which is a bit surprising, because Alfie expected a secretary or something. On the other hand, it’s past seven in the evening already, so she probably went home. 

“Yeah, hello,” Alfie says. “This is Julius fucking Caesar, right, calling for… well. Not quite sure, actually. Help me out here, mate. You Brutus or Mark Antony in this scenario?”

There is a long moment of silence.

“Evening, Alfie,” Tommy says then.

“Yeah.”

“Somebody try to stab you?”

“Fuckin’ _ tried, _ he says. What makes you think they didn’t succeed, mate? Hm?”

There is another second of silence.

“Did you…” Tommy says then, in that slow way he has, when he can’t seem to figure out what another person wants from him, but he knows that there’s _ something. _ “You want me to call somebody?”

“Like who?” Alfie says, just to rile him up.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tommy says, dry as the desert. “A doctor, maybe.”

“Didn’t get fuckin’ stabbed, mate,” Alfie says. 

“There you go, then.”

“Some other cunt, though, yeah? Got shot in the stomach not ten minutes ago. Multiple times. Bleeding out on my floorboards as we speak, actually.”

“Shot by who?”

“Oh, no idea, mate,” Alfie says. “Yeah… can’t be expected to remember_ all _of the fuckin’ details, now can I.”

“You really can’t,” Tommy says, sounding very sarcastic. “Alfie. Why are you calling me?”

“S’one of your guys, innit,” Alfie says. If he listens carefully, he can almost hear Tommy’s eyebrows go up. Would bet money on the fact that he’s sitting a lot straighter in his chair, all of a sudden. 

“Meaning what?”

“The Glasgow ones,” Alfie says. “Yeah? The ones that want my people dead for all the wrong fuckin’ reasons?” 

“He’s still alive, you said?” Tommy says after a short pause in which he no doubt has circled through all possible and impossible options. Alfie’s aware of the fact that the big, dramatic gunpowder plot did end up being very big and dramatic in all the wrong ways, even though he’s hazy on the details. Realizes now that Tommy might be, too, and isn’t that a terrifying thought.

"He is, yeah," Alfie says. “Any question you’d like me to pass along, mate? Could maybe tell you a few interesting things about the next great fascist Octavius? Before he gets to the Augustus part?”

“How are you Caesar in this scenario,” Tommy says, sounding… _ something. _ Any other person, Alfie might call it amused, but he’s probably just starting to pay more attention.

“In this here fuckin’ scenario,” Alfie says. “I am the cunt with two corpses in his house, which, as a_ God, _yeah, I don’t really fuckin’ appreciate. Right? That’s it.”

“Keep him alive,” Tommy says, ignoring his rambling, like he’s in any position to actually give Alfie orders. 

"Fuck off," Alfie says immediately, suddenly furious about the casual way Tommy’s making demands. "You can fuck right off, mate, yeah. Nurse could've done that, couldn't she, if she hadn't been' shot in the fuckin' head! Right! So." 

There is another moment of silence, probably Tommy digesting that information. 

"How much," he finally says with a sigh, sounding almost bored. 

Alfie wants to laugh, or maybe kick his teeth in. He's not sure. That distinction isn't always entirely clear, as far as Tommy Shelby is concerned. 

"Tell you what," he says. "I, right,_ I _ want another eye for my troubles. Brand new one. Left one, preferably, but I'm not picky." 

"All out of eyes, I'm afraid," Tommy says after another short pause. 

"Are you, now." 

"Yeah," Tommy says, then mumbles "Can't seem to see anything these days, anyway" in an vacant voice that sounds like he's talking to himself more than anything. Alfie decides to ignore him right back.

“You in London?”

“I am.”

“Well,” Alfie concedes, albeit reluctantly. “Cunt might make it for another hour or two, won’t he.”

“I’m on my way,” Tommy says and then just hangs up. Fucking hell, Alfie thinks. Now he might have to perform first aid on a guy that tried to kill him, just so Tommy won’t complain when he gets here and it was all for nothing. What a shame, he thinks.

He was enjoying being dead so far.

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically just an excuse to write some action scenes / gun fights, because they're fun as hell and for some reason I was really in the mood for that. Trying to cope, probably lmao. I'm hand waving the cancer for now, because well, let's be honest, that's what the show did too. (Let's go with misdiagnosis or something.) 
> 
> And yes, I have mangled the Arctic Monkeys for the title.
> 
> I'm [bakedapplesauce](https://bakedapplesauce.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


End file.
